Jimmy Quinn's goal is still one of my all-time faves. Lovely set-up, both feet off the ground, perfect dipping volley - GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL!
Is anyone betting on Sweden today?
No Somos muchos pero estamos locos.
Jimmy Quinn's goal is still one of my all-time faves. Lovely set-up, both feet off the ground, perfect dipping volley - GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL!
A leading authority on League of Ireland football since 2003. You're probably wrong.
Short TG4 documentary on this:
The match in full:
An absolute lie.
As someone who was there that night, I can tell you that the incident was as follows. The dressing rooms at Windsor were in the corner, so that when he returned to the bench after half-time, he had to walk along the touchline.
As he did so, the crowd were singing "One Team in Ireland", so he smiled and started waving an arm on his way to his seat.
Not that mere facts ever stopped the bigots from making up lies, or the gullible idiots from repeating them.
Or as they said in 'The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance': “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend"
P.S. I make absolutely no apology for challenging this disgraceful slur against a decent man who is unable to defend himself, so if anyone is rolling their eyes and complaining "He's off on one again", then they should know that unless PS apologises and withdraws, the fault lies entirely with him.
Really? Did it show footage of "Billy Bingham ... winding up sectarian chanting" [sic], as Stu alleged?
For if you look at the actual match footage, he was clearly seen encouraging the crowd when they were singing "One Team in Ireland":
See at 1:16:40
Meanwhile, if you watch the rest of that Eirsport footage of the game, the real "revisionism" actually comes from Irish Republicans, who exagerrated or even made up claims about the events of that evening. For much of that they relied on a play written nearly a year after the event by Marie Jones, who at that stage had never been to a football match in her life. ("I had read about the game in the papers", she was later to admit.) You can guess the authenticity of this work by the fact that its hero was a Prod NI fan who was so offended by what he heard at the game that he turned into an ROI fan. Yeah, really, like that sort of thing happens all the time with football...
Anyhow, this gave rise to claims about eg singing of The Billy Boys etc. Yet if you watch the actual game (above), where the soundtrack is clear, that song was not sung once!
Now it is true that there were some occasional, rather desultory choruses of The Sash from a section of the crowd, which I don't defend or deny. But other than that, plus some nasty booing of a couple of individuals (Phelan, Kernaghan), there was nothing else objectionable about any of the chants or songs from the NI support throughout the entire game.
While if the game was such a "Welcome to Hell" hatefest, Istanbul-style, how come the small bunch of ROI fans in attendance felt sufficiently emboldened to start singing "Here We Go, Here We Go" in the closing minutes, as noted by George Hamilton (see video 1:29:30)? Indeed one of those fans was Gary Spain, late of this parish, who happily admitted that it was nowhere nearly so bad as alleged after the event by people who weren't even at the game!
But hey, what do I know? I mean, I was only there, and have viewed the actual TV footage of the game in its entirety. How does that compare to the forensic, documentary analysis of Pineapple Stu, who read about it on the internet?![]()
It really did indeed, indeed it did. Really.
Inconveniently for your version, it also featured several people who like yourself, were there that night. Or at least you claim to have been, these people were.
You mention Kernaghan who it might be argued had it coming but your airbrushing glossed over the racial targeting of Phelan and McGrath throughout, which again RTE gave focus to last night.
You seem to spend an unusual amount of time on here, dragging threads off topic, but each to their own, or not, as the case may be. As we have you here, and you claim to be close to the pulse of all things relating to that evening, Alan McDonald ( God rest him and a pity there aren't more of his kind among his kind ) came to our dressing room afterwards to wish us well in representing Ireland and the people of Ireland at the WC as his team had done in the 80s. Did you ever hear he had to go against the wishes of Bingham to do so ? Because I heard that, but I wouldn't be as close to it as you are, thankfully.
FWIW, I have EG on ignore since he tried arguing Dublin wasn't the capital of Ireland, but as you mention Kernaghan, I don't think it's fair to say he had it coming. He didn't turn down the North (which I presume is what you're referencing); they wouldn't select him because, though eligible, he wasn't born there and didn't have a parent from there. He qualified on the basis of a grandparent and (I presume) residence, having lived in the North from the ages of 4 to (I think) 16, but that wasn't good enough for them. So we offered him a cap, and he was happy to come on board.
Jeez, you see that EG ?
Here you are writing essays and you don't even exist in Pineapplers orbit.
Its a tough aul station where the train don't stop, as the saying goes.
McDonald was a scumbag too. Made the lives of Gallens and the other young Irish at QPR back then miserable by a lot of accounts. Club captain too.
That display of dignity in Windsor Park must have been an aberration.
I like high energy football. A little bit rock and roll. Many finishes instead of waiting for the perfect one.
Interesting that EG chose to leave out Bingham's labelling of players born in England as "mercenaries" in the build up to the game. Or quotes like this
https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/s...955244964.html
Republic defender Alan Kernaghan — the Yorkshire-born, Bangor-raised Protestant, former Northern Ireland schoolboy international (and future Glens manager) — heard his mother being described as “the Pope’s whore.Wise words… so why was Bingy, of all people, inciting the crowd with animated gestures during the warm-up — something he’d repeat at half time?https://www.rte.ie/sport/soccer/2018...k-25-years-on/Never, in my experience, had the ‘Billy Boys’ been delivered with such gusto than in the moments following Quinn’s marvellous 72nd minute effort, two and a half hours short of his 34th birthday.
https://thesetpieces.com/latest-post...living-memory/Billy Bingham was trying to rouse the crowd by waving his arms and getting them to make the atmosphere even more hostile. It was probably the most volatile atmosphere we've ever experienced at a sports event in this island.
https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/s.../37512338.htmlGod Save The Queen was played by a brass band and the atmosphere was febrile. The first half was poor, but the noise level never wavered, strains of the Billy Boys – “We’re up to our knees in Fenian blood, surrender or you’ll die” – echoing through the air. As the second half started, news filtered through from Seville that Spain had taken the lead against Denmark and, as it stood, the Republic were going to the World Cup.
https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/s.../39374281.htmlAs sectarian abuse rained down from the stands, McGrath and team-mate Terry Phelan suffered the added indignity of racial taunts.
The man who'd led Northern Ireland to two World Cups then doubled down on his vitriol during the match, his animated touchline gesticulations inciting a 10,500 home-fans-only capacity crowd that hardly required further inducement, judging by the cacophony of vile, feral abuse already enveloping this seething cauldron of hatred.
Am I right in thinking GSTQ wasn't played in Lansdowne? So it was effectively reciprocal agreement not to play either away anthem in those games, leading up Á na bhF not being played up there?
Last edited by pineapple stu; 18/11/2024 at 6:11 PM.
Correct. No anthem or national flag for the away team in both games
Did it claim that Bingham wound the crowd up to sectarian singing i.e. Stu's original allegation, with which I took issue?
And what do you mean by my "claiming" to have been there? Don't make me hoke in the attic, search out my programme and ticket stub and post it on here.
"Airbrushing"? What part of "nasty" don't you understand?
Once again, it was Stu who dragged up a game from 31 years ago, not me. And I have stuck rigidly to his nasty slur about Bingham.
To which I note that neither he nor anyone else has come up with evidence for this lie - unlike the clear counter evidence I provided from the Eir Sports video of the game.
Yes, I was aware of Big Mac's noble gesture.
And as for Bingham not wanting him to do so (source?), this was a special night for him - his last as manager, after all - tensions were running high throughout and he and Charlton* had been having run-in's before and during the match. But telling McDonald to "not go near them" is NOT the same as stirring up sectarian singing, as Stu has claimed, and which has been my (as yet unanswered) point throughout.
* - Iirc, Big Jack also had the grace to admit afterwards that he had gone a bit overboard with some of his comments: “At a post-match press conference, Charlton apologised for as yet unreported remarks to Billy Bingham at the end of the game.” - Irish News
"By a lot of [unnamed] accounts" - here we go again, impugning someone who's not alive to speak for himself. Or sue.
So let me get this straight. After years of being a sectarian "scumbag", McDonald suddenly acts completely out of character, on a night like that, and (allegedly) against the orders of his manager? Really?
Having some friends who are QPR fans, I can tell you that Big Mac was an absolute legend at QPR, adored by one and all. Just read this tribute to the big man on this fans' website:
https://www.indyrs.co.uk/2012/12/rec...nd-team-mates/
Note eg what Sharon Smith said about him, she being a big ROI fan working at QPR, who at the time of writing, had moved to Ireland and was working for the Irish PFA:
“When I heard that Alan had passed away I felt that I’d lost a friend. I know he’s a hero to QPR fans, but he was always my mate Macca."
Or what Stephen Lynch had to say:
"He was very supportive to the young players, especially us young Irish lads, and he was forever giving us boots and gear."
And as for the Gallens, if he was so nasty to them, why did Kevin and Steve Gallen voluntarily fly over to Belfast to play in Alan's tribute match, with a number of Irish QPR fans also driving up from the Republic to be there?
https://www.indyrs.co.uk/2012/11/ala...eptember-2012/
So I can state with no fear of contradiction that you are talking absolute sh1te - and a particularly nasty-smelling type at that.
You really ought to be ashamed, but I somehow doubt that someone who'd make up stuff like you just have would even understand the concept, never mind feel it.
Last edited by EalingGreen; 18/11/2024 at 6:10 PM.
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